Chương 24: 24-Into THE DUNGEON

Vraxious – Whispering Grotto Dungeon Vrax stood beneath a sign stretching over the road in cheerful yellow lettering. It read, "Welcome to The Whispering Grotto." He looked around, shading his eyes from the midday sun. The stark blue stone staircase leading down into the dungeon sat before them, manned by a pair of well-armed adventurers, fresh green blood staining their tunics from a goblin that had wandered up an hour ago.

Torvald was pacing back and forth, asking every person who came up the road if they were there to guide him. Vrax looked over in mild concern; their "babysitter" was at least an hour late, and Torvald seemed like he was another hour away from just trying to bribe the staircase guards. Vrax had used the time to partially modify another lurker mushroom to the new acidic standard. He had also been observing the adventurers descending below.

The few he could identify had mostly been in the level thirty to sixty range, but he knew the lowest floors here could challenge even a Tier-2 Warrior. The number of machetes and axes people brought also suggested some dense obstructions below. Not a single torch, however, so it had to be well lit.

A man swaggered up the road in a strange clashing ensemble silk robes of yellow, orange, and white loosely over the top of dark-colored metal armor, a long and thin two-handed sword at his hip almost dragging on the ground behind him. Haughty eyes loomed beneath a feathered yellow hat with a wide brim. He sauntered straight up to Vrax, who had to quickly put his mushroom away to avoid an incident. Torvald sprinted over, slightly out of breath.

"You must be our guide im Torvald Nice to meet you we are ready to go!" Torvald huffed out without a single breath in between. The man did everything but sneer at Torvald.

"Yes, you must be the two that Lento asked me to 'escort.' You look the part. One of you looks like your mother fucked a giant, and the other just looks like he fucks trees. Let's make this quick. You haven't been in a dungeon before, so I don't imagine you will make it far before I have to save you. You are the fifth group I have had to do this for, and so far only one of them made it. I heard you are from some bumfuck town on the border. Well, there is a lot worse than first-level slimes in there.

If I have to save you more than three times, I'm calling it, and you can wait until you level up a bit like everyone else. I'm Renald, but just call me Red; everyone else does." He marched off, barely having even glanced at the two of them.

"Well, he is fucking delightful." Vrax scoffed. Torvald just beamed.

"How about we show him just what bumfuck town we came from?" Torvald whispered with a big knowing smile.

"This dungeon is famous for how scary it is on the lower floors because it has some monsters lifted straight from our forest…. The top floor is just goblins mostly." Vrax gave an evil, knowing smile and hurried to catch up. Red had already started descending the staircase, just waving at the two guards standing watch and checking dungeon pass papers. Vrax caught up.

"Alright, I get that you don't think much of us country folk, but how about you put your money where your sass is? A gold coin says we clear the first floor without needing your help." Red gave a genuine smile and stopped nodding to the nearby guard.

"Hey, you hear that?" The guard nodded.

"Good, I'll take that bet. Don't get me wrong, kid, I don't want you shits to fail, it's just after the first hundred or so starry-eyed kids damn near piss themselves the first time a Goblin berserker sinks an axe into a leg or arm… well, my expectations have gotten pretty fucking low." Vrax held out a hand to shake on the bet.

"Thanks for paying for our room for the next couple of weeks," he said. Red chuckled, almost disbelieving of Vrax's brash attitude.

"Alright, you cocky little shits, get in there." Red let them go first and started trailing behind. The stair ended after a dozen or so strides, melting into the dirt-covered floor. A cavern loomed in front of them, angling downwards. A vast forest of fungal growths practically swarming with luminescent blue fireflies chasing each other through the mushroom stems and shelves of fungi jutting from stalagmites.

The sounds of battle could be heard in the far distance along with the howls of strange beasts in the darker corners of the vegetation nearby. Vrax immediately pulled his new spear, taking a defensive stance, and called forth his armor in a dull green flash. Torvald likewise hefted his warhammer and stepped slightly in front of Vrax. Red looked at their amazed expressions with amusement, mistaking wonder for fear.

"Welcome to the dungeon!" Vrax and Torvald made eye contact, briefly sharing a nod as Vrax scaled up a nearby fungal shelf, leaping to the top of a green-blue spotted mushroom-like tree. Vrax almost melted into the slight moss on top of the caps; it slightly drew towards him, breaking up his silhouette. Torvald started walking forward with slow, cautious steps, doing his best to stay in the least dense paths of vegetation underneath the caps.

They slowly advanced this way, Vrax a few dozen strides ahead, flashing Torvald simple hand signals every time he stopped. Red watched from a healthy distance behind them, an eyebrow cocked curiously. This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. Vrax leapt from one cap to the next in a silent roll. An especially dense patch of slightly glowing vines every so slightly rustling ahead of Torvald caught his attention.

He held up a hand, stopping Torvald in his tracks as he leapt one cap closer and peered directly down. Three huddled figures armed with shoddy spears and simple metal armor peeked through the mass of vines. Vrax flashed, Identify [Fungal cave goblin](lvl1). He stopped in surprise. Wait, really? Level one? With a shrug, he caught Torvald's eye, signaling three below, and began a countdown. Torvald pretended to be unaware, walking by the patch of vines and springing the trap.

Two goblins leapt free, hissing and jabbing their spears well short of him; the third leapt for his face. With almost contemptuous ease, he sidestepped the uncoordinated creature and caught it by the face with one massive hand, the other backhanding its spear away into the underbrush. There was a momentary pause in the action, and Torvald squeezed hard, crushing the small creature's skull with a crunch-pop sound. Vrax simply slid down a vine behind the two goblins, who reeled in horror at the sudden death.

Vrax kicked the leg of one goblin sideways with a snap. Then cracked the butt of his spear across the back of the head of the other. Torvald caught the stumbling goblin with a devastating warhammer swing, pasting him across the glowing vines, while Vrax whirled and finished off the downed foe with a deft jab to the base of the neck. Vrax leaped away from the bodies as a bush near them rose slightly from the ground.

Dozens of eyes disguised as yellow berries ravenously snapped open as spindly arms and legs contorted from where they hid within the blood-red leaves. Identify showed him what had ambushed them: a [corpseberry bush](lvl4). Vrax's quick reaction saved him from a deceptively far-reaching hooked hand grasping towards his back. Torvald didn't hesitate, blasting in with his skill-empowered charge, and with a wide sweep of his hammer, he took the Corpseberry's legs right out from under it.

The follow-up blow to the torso harmlessly sprung back, the thick shrubbery absorbing the impact. He rained another two blows ineffectually against the thing's body, and it began to claw its way back to its feet.

"Vrax, this one is you unless you want me to pull its fucking legs off!" Vrax thought for a moment.

"Actually, yeah, can you pin it?" He shouted, circling to the creature's back. Torvald roared, dropping his hammer. He grabbed the thing by the ankles and did his best to slam it back into the mossy ground as it clawed at him. Vrax charged up a smite, waiting for the beast to rake towards Torvald again, and then he hooked the spear's end down into the shrubbery, releasing the smite as far inside as he could. The corpse bush shriveled in on itself, berry eyestalks wilting inward along with the red leaves.

Torvald threw it end over end against a tree for good measure and grabbed his warhammer, scanning for more foes. [Corpseberry bush](lvl4) Slain [Fungal cave goblin](lvl1) Slain [Fungal cave goblin](lvl1) Slain [Fungal cave goblin](lvl1) Slain [Essence Gained] Vrax ignored the minor rush of essence and ascended back into the fungal canopy, continuing his trek forward. These foes were barely worth slowing for; better not be a cocky dumbass, though.

Red is watching us like a hawk, waiting for something to happen, he knows we are about to run into something. Vrax ascended to the highest cap nearby and looked down further into the gently sloping forest. There were a few small brooks babbling down farther on with concerningly sparking fish swimming up and down them. Past that he saw uneven boulders rising in a rough circle, leaving an opening wide enough for two men to walk through abreast.

A single long-dead tree loomed from the center of the rocky formations, the rest hidden behind the earthen walls. Vrax tumbled down from branch to branch to speak with Torvald.

"There is a stone formation ahead, it looks just like the kind of thing a dungeon would use to lure us in and kill us with," he said matter-of-factly. Torvald peeked past the trees, trying to see it.

"So we are going to go rob it of whatever bait it has to lure us with, right?"

"Naturally," Vrax said, slinking into the shadows of the mushrooms and heading towards the rock formation. Torvald followed behind. Vrax made it all the way up to the closest boulder, careful to avoid stepping in the gently sparkling brook nearby. He could clearly hear the chatter of goblins ahead. He kept to the small shrubs growing around the base of the boulders and crawled to the edge to survey the inside of the formation. There were goblins, a lot of them, in fact, nearly ten by his count.

The thing that stopped him dead in the bush, however, was the horrid fleeting figures of two pixies dancing around the goblins' low-burning campfires, ravenously picking bones clean from a recent kill with their sharp fangs. Pixies were minuscule but vicious magical beasts able to turn briefly invisible and cast spells if given the chance. Vrax silently crawled back to Torvald and shared his findings.

"You still want to try it?" Torvald asked,"Yeah, I do. A pixie corpse is easily worth two gold no matter the condition, and I think we are surprisingly well equipped to deal with them." Vrax said"Dandelion Nightmare?" Torvald asked,"No, not yet. It takes a while to regrow the seeds, and I want to save them for when we run into a bigger pack of them. Plus, I think pixies could magically blow away the seeds with wind. I was thinking it's time we test the daisy.

I can seal off one of the two exits with my garden; you can get the other when the crowd is thinned out. You can charge fast enough to catch the flighty fuckers," Vrax shared.

"That might just work, even if I can't catch them, I can probably herd them towards your mushrooms. They won't be terribly dangerous to me, but you need to be careful with your toughness; one spell might be enough to kill you." Torvald said with a concerned tone,"Meh, if a fucking pixie is what gets me at this point, I probably deserve it." Vrax shrugged and took the daisy out of his pocket, sliding over to the other entrance to the goblin camp.

He cocked back his arm and tossed the daisy jar in a lazy arc towards a goblin standing off to the side relieving himself on a pile of refuse.